Foreword

I am a lazy man. Laziness
keeps me from believing that enlightenment demands effort, discipline, strict
diet, non-smoking, and other evidences of virtue. That's about the worst
heresy I could propose, but I have to be honest before I can be reverent. I
am doing the work of writing this book to save myself the trouble of talking
about it.

There is an odd chance that this is what someone
needs to read in order to feel better about himself. If you are a kind person
and want to know what to expect when enlightenment strikes and why it comes
to you, with or without psychedelic help, this is for you.

These are the rules of the game as I see them. I
realize that many of us are opening up very fast these days, and one of the
most common delusions we face is the belief that our sense of revelation is
unique. The feeling of knowing the truth is not enough. My intention is not
to pretend final truth, but to suggest certain simple attitudes that will
work for anybody and stay with you in the most extreme freak-out or
space-out, even when your mind is completely blown. These attitudes are so
simple that I'm surrounding them with a picture of the universe to show why
they work even when you don't believe they will.

The universe is so vast and complex that if we
needed books like this to become enlightened, we'd never make it. But on the
other hand the universe is so simple in design that there's no reason for
anyone to be puzzled or unhappy. It's easy to control your existence, no
matter how complicated it looks. I've abandoned the idea of writing this a
number of times, on the ground that people didn't know it because they didn't
want to. But in the end there is no more reason for not writing it than there
is for writing it.

I am writing what I will want to read someday when
I am stuck in a weird place. Several times on bummers I've thought: What
could I say to someone in this state of mind that would mean anything? That's
the kind of testing this information has had. There isn't a line in this book
that is there just because it sounds beautiful. The information is practical
and reliable. It has taken me and others safely through some extreme states
of mind, and can be reduced to a few phrases that are simple enough to recall
in any crisis.

The first chapter begins with a briefly stated
idea about how the universe is made, and the rest of the book discusses our
lives from that viewpoint. It is a far-reaching idea, extending into every
field of knowledge, and since it took me many years to get it straight, I
cannot expect that anyone else should casually accept it. All I can do is ask
that you play the idea game, see where it leads, and check it out against
what you know. What has to be true for the universe to look to us as it does?
Is there a credible bridge between matter and spirit? Like many people, I
wrestled with such concerns for years, and this book contains some of the
conclusions. Perhaps these conclusions will be meaningful to you only if you
follow your own process of checking and proving. If so, the first chapter
contains all you will need to keep you busy for a long time. On the other
hand, if all you want is a handy trip guide, you'll find that, too.

I'm really not expecting
anyone to take these sentences and expand them again into a feeling of
realization. But if one of you whom I never hear about gets a little higher
and happier, then I would write all this again a thousand times over. I hope
you find the vibrations pleasant.